Windows 10

There are still some significant issues with some drivers, which results in BSOD crashes, which are not helpful. I've several machines across a number of users on 10, and they are basically stable, but not always, and the worst is a 6 month old Acer Laptop, which has not been a good experience, the most recent update won't install clean, the video driver seems to be the issue, it crashes with Page fault errors way too often, and the bluetooth mouse is unreliable on both the new release and the previous build, despite it being a Microsoft device. There are also some unresolved issues with Update not installing new third party drivers, and that's caused me some issues with HP and Ricoh printers, which are in theory supported, but in practise, I have had some issues with both devices.

The biggest show stopper for me is the lack of control over Update, especially on a laptop that may be being used away from home networks, a major update starting 10 minutes before going through security at an airport (for example) is not exactly helpful, as you either have to abort it, and power down, or find a way to keep it going so that it doesn't fail and perhaps cause even bigger problems as a result. I't MY computer, and as such I should have ultimate control over what is updated and when, and not Microsoft, and that going forward could become a significant deal breaker for many corporate users.

There are some nice new features, but having said that, my main browser is Firefox, and I use Thunderbird mail client, and don't have Office on this machine (it's way too expensive these days), I use a different office package that covers most of what I need, apart from an annoying crash with Twain scanning, which is app related, the same driver works with an ancient copy of paintshop pro.

the latest release is supposed to make 10 more acceptable to corporate users, but at present, I can't install it on this machine as it's not stable, and Microsoft don't have answers as to why at the moment, which is worrying.

Whichever route you decide to go, the most critical aspect is to make sure you have valid backups of everything on the machine before you let it update, and then make sure you do regular backups going forward, as there's no way to know when update may make it hard or even impossible to get back into the machine easily, which is not clever.

Boot time is quicker, and it's not so badly locked out after sign on as earlier versions. A right click on the menu button gives a choice menu that goes to a lot of useful areas of the machine, which saves a lot of searching. If you need access to just about everything, do a Google search for God Mode, it works in 10 as in earlier versions. This machine came with 8.1, I had been using XP until relatively shortly before migrating to this machine, and I have to admit to preferring 10 to 8.1, even though there are some issues with 10 that really should not have got out into use. As long as I don't get any more problems with later updates, I will stick with 10 for now, hopefully, Microsoft are listening to feedback from the users, and responding to that feedback.